A journalist, seemingly sharing the illusions of politicians, writes “it’s time for the gilets jaunes to decide who and what they want to be”. (The Guardian, 29/01/2019) The politicians of france (and of everywhere, faced by a similar insurrection) are eager to have a “who” and “what” behind every rebellion, for it is in this manner that rebellions can be induced to negotiate, to be domesticated and subdued.
Many of the gilets jaunes, even in the face of their divisions, continue to refuse unifying identification and thus representation. And the chimera of unity is nothing but a desired instrument of subjection. What has characterised the insurrection hitherto is a diversity that understands and acts together, more or less, but without ever ignoring its differences. Indeed, the insurrection has been as much against itself (as a permanent, internal struggle of practice and thought), as it is against the State.
The voices from within the movement are many, but few are as significant as the initiatives taken by the yellow vest assembly of Commercy.
In early December of last year, the yellow vest assembly of Commercy released a first statement-manifesto, where it tried to give form to the insurrection. In a second statement-manifesto, it called upon all local assemblies of the movement to gather together in an “assembly of assemblies” on the 26th of January.
With assemblies of the Pyrenees, Brittany and Normandy, Cévennes and the Alps, Alsace and Lorraine, Paris, Nantes and Poitiers, and more (some one hundred), a third statement-manifesto was issued, which we share below.
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The gilets jaunes: A movement that is not a movement
Movement is the impossibility, indefiniteness and imperfection of every politics. It always leaves a residue. In this perspective the motto I cited as a rule for myself might be reformulated in ontological terms as this: ‘the movement is that which if it is, is as if it wasn’t, it lacks itself; and if it isn’t, is as if it was, it exceeds itself’. It is the threshold of indeterminacy between an excess and a deficiency that marks the limit of every politics in its constitutive imperfection.
Giorgio Agamben, Movement
Considerations on the singularity of the yellow vests …
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